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Starr, an attorney, is head of New York-based Starr and Co. and Starr Investment Advisors LLC, which federal regulators said has accounts exceeding $700 million. Stein was a state assemblyman from 1969 through 1977, borough president of Manhattan from 1978 through 1985 and president of the New York City Council from 1986 through 1993.
Beranger said Stein had failed to pay $2.1 million in taxes between 2003 and 2009 for millions of dollars he was paid for working as a consultant for various investment companies. He said Stein shielded the money from the IRS by creating a shell corporation to move money through, by rapidly moving money among bank accounts and by using third parties' credit cards to pay his personal expenses. Beranger said Stein lied about these matters twice.
Beranger said Stein used some of the proceeds of Starr's investment fraud to rent a luxury property in the posh Long Island community of Bridgehampton. The home, which cost $150,000 for the summer of 2008 alone, was rented by Stein each summer from 2007 through 2009, he said.
Beranger described Starr as having carried out a Ponzi-like scheme from January 2008 through April by persuading clients to make safe investments with him and then diverting the money to himself and to risky investments in which he, his wife and his close associates, including Stein, held undisclosed financial interests.
Starr testified in 2008 that he warned Snipes that he could get into trouble if he didn't pay his taxes.
Snipes, the star of the "Blade" movies, was convicted in Florida of three counts of failing to file tax returns. He was cleared on fraud and conspiracy charges.
Starr also once advised Stallone. Stallone later sued him, saying Starr advised him to keep his investment in Planet Hollywood restaurants even though Starr told others the chain was headed for bankruptcy. The suit was eventually settled.
Scorsese publicist Leslee Dart said Scorsese had not been a client of Starr's for some time. She declined to say when he was a client.
Starr is not the same person as the Kenneth Starr who became famous in the 1990s as the prosecutor probing then-president Bill Clinton's affair with his White House intern Monica Lewinsky.